Chuck Klosterman X: A Highly Specific, Defiantly Incomplete History of the Early 21st Century

New York Times best-selling author and cultural critic Chuck Klosterman presents a unique Audio Companion for Chuck Klosterman X, in which he contextualizes and reads from the collection of his best articles and essays, providing both a fascinating tour of the past decade and an ideal introduction to the mind of one of the sharpest and most prolific observers of our unusual times.

Eating the Dinosaur

In Eating the Dinosaur, Klosterman is more entertaining and incisive than ever. Whether he's dissecting the boredom of voyeurism, the reason why music fan's inevitably hate their favorite band's latest album, or why we love watching can't-miss superstars fail spectacularly, Klosterman remains obsessed with the relationship between expectation, reality, and living history. It's amateur anthropology for the present tense, and sometimes it's incredibly funny.

I Wear the Black Hat: Grappling with Villains (Real and Imagined)

In I Wear the Black Hat, Klosterman questions the very nature of how modern people understand the concept of villainy. What was so Machiavellian about Machiavelli? Why don't we see Batman the same way we see Bernhard Goetz? Who's more worthy of our vitriol - Bill Clinton or Don Henley? What was O.J. Simpson's second-worst decision? Masterfully blending cultural analysis with self-interrogation and limitless imagination, I Wear the Black Hat delivers perceptive observations on the complexity of the anti-hero.

But What If We're Wrong?: Thinking About the Present as If It Were the Past

We live in a culture of casual certitude. This has always been the case, no matter how often that certainty has failed. Though no generation believes there's nothing left to learn, every generation unconsciously assumes that what has already been defined and accepted is (probably) pretty close to how reality will be viewed in perpetuity. And then, of course, time passes. Ideas shift. Opinions invert. What once seemed reasonable eventually becomes absurd, replaced by modern perspectives that feel even more irrefutable and secure - until, of course, they don't.

Downtown Owl: A Novel

Somewhere in North Dakota, there is a town called Owl that isn't there. Disco is over, but punk never happened. They don't have cable. They don't really have pop culture, unless you count grain prices and alcoholism. People work hard and then they die. They hate the government and impregnate teenage girls. But that's not nearly as awful as it sounds; in fact, sometimes it's perfect.

The Visible Man: A Novel

Therapist Victoria Vick is contacted by a cryptic, unlikable man who insists his situation is unique and unfathomable. Vick becomes convinced that he suffers from a complex set of delusions: Y__, as she refers to him, claims to be a scientist who has stolen cloaking technology from an aborted government project in order to render himself nearly invisible. Unsure of his motives or honesty, Vick becomes obsessed with her patient....

Meet Me in the Bathroom: Rebirth and Rock and Roll in New York City 2001-2011

In the second half of the 20th century New York was the source of new sounds, including the Greenwich Village folk scene, punk and new wave, and hip-hop. But as the end of the millennium neared, cutting-edge bands began emerging from Seattle, Austin, and London, pushing New York further from the epicenter. The behemoth music industry, too, found itself in free fall, under siege from technology. Then 9/11/2001 plunged the country into a state of uncertainty and war.

A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments

In this exuberantly praised book - a collection of seven pieces on subjects ranging from television to tennis, from the Illinois State Fair to the films of David Lynch, from postmodern literary theory to the supposed fun of traveling aboard a Caribbean luxury cruiseliner - David Foster Wallace brings to nonfiction the same curiosity, hilarity, and exhilarating verbal facility that has delighted readers of his fiction.

A Brief History of Vice: How Bad Behavior Built Civilization

Guns, germs, and steel might have transformed us from hunter-gatherers into modern man, but booze, sex, trash talk, and tripping built our civilization. Cracked editor Robert Evans brings his signature dogged research and lively insight to uncover the many and magnificent ways vice has influenced history, from the prostitute-turned-empress who scored a major victory for women's rights to the beer that helped create - and destroy - South America's first empire.

Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire: A 500-Year History

A razor-sharp thinker offers a new understanding of our post-truth world and explains the American instinct to believe in make-believe, from the Pilgrims to P. T. Barnum to Disneyland to zealots of every stripe...to Donald Trump. In this sweeping, eloquent history of America, Kurt Andersen demonstrates that what's happening in our country today - this strange, post-factual, "fake news" moment we're all living through - is not something entirely new, but rather the ultimate expression of our national character and path.

Your Favorite Band Is Killing Me: What Pop Music Rivalries Reveal About the Meaning of Life

Music opinions bring out passionate debate in people, and Steven Hyden knows that firsthand. Each chapter in Your Favorite Band Is Killing Me focuses on a pop music rivalry, from the classic to the very recent, and draws connections to the larger forces surrounding the pairing.

Runnin' with the Devil: A Backstage Pass to the Wild Times, Loud Rock, and the Down and Dirty Truth Behind the Making of Van Halen

Van Halen's rise in the 1980s was one of the most thrilling the music world had ever seen - their mythos an epic party, a sweaty, sexy, never-ending rock extravaganza. During this unparalleled run of success, debauchery, and drama, no one was closer to the band than Noel Monk. Throughout Van Halen's meteoric rise and abrupt halt, this confidant, fixer, friend, and promoter saw it all and lived to tell. Now, for the first time, he shares the most outrageous escapades.

Kanye West Owes Me $300: And Other True Stories from a White Rapper Who Almost Made It Big

When 12-year-old Jensen Karp got his first taste of rapping for crowds at his friend's bar mitzvah in 1991, little did he know that he was taking his first step on a crazy journey - one that would end with a failed million-dollar recording and publishing deal with Interscope Records when he was only 19. Now, in Kanye West Owes Me $300, Karp finally tells the true story of his wild ride as "Hot Karl", the most famous white rapper you've never heard of.

Love Is a Mix Tape: Life and Love, One Song at a Time

In the 1990s, a shy music geek named Rob Sheffield met a hell-raising punk-rock girl named Renee, who was way too cool for him but fell in love with him anyway. They had nothing in common, except that they both loved music. Music brought them together and kept them together. And it was music that would help Rob through a sudden, unfathomable loss. In Love is a Mix Tape, Rob, now a writer for Rolling Stone, uses the songs on 15 mix tapes to tell the story of his brief time with Renee.

TV (the Book): Two Experts Pick the Greatest American Shows of All Time

What's the greatest TV show ever? That debate reaches an epic conclusion in TV (the Book). Sepinwall and Seitz have identified and ranked the 100 greatest scripted shows in American TV history. Using a complex, obsessively all-encompassing scoring system, they've created a pantheon of top TV shows, each accompanied by essays delving into what made these shows great.

Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim

In his newest collection of essays, David Sedaris lifts the corner of ordinary life, revealing the absurdity teeming below its surface. His world is alive with obscure desires and hidden motives, a world where forgiveness is automatic and an argument can be the highest form of love. Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim is another unforgettable collection from one of the wittiest and most original writers at work today.

Trouble Boys: The True Story of the Replacements

Written with the participation of the group's key members, including reclusive singer-songwriter Paul Westerberg, bassist Tommy Stinson, and the family of late guitarist Bob Stinson, Trouble Boys is a deeply intimate and nuanced portrait, exposing the primal factors and forces - addiction, abuse, fear - that would shape one of the most brilliant and notoriously self-destructive bands of all time.

Dreaming the Beatles: A Love Story of One Band and the Whole World

Dreaming the Beatles is not another biography of the Beatles or a song-by-song analysis of the best of John and Paul. It isn't another exposé about how they broke up. It isn't a history of their gigs or their gear. It is a collection of essays telling the story of what this ubiquitous band means to a generation who grew up with the Beatles' music on their parents' stereos and their faces on T-shirts. What do the Beatles mean today? Why are they more famous and beloved now than ever? Find out.

Publisher's Summary

For 6,557 miles, Chuck Klosterman thought about dying. He drove a rental car from New York to Rhode Island to Georgia to Mississippi to Iowa to Minneapolis to Fargo to Seattle, and he chased death and rock 'n' roll all the way. Within the span of 21 days, Chuck had three relationships end, one by choice, one by chance, and one by exhaustion. He snorted cocaine in a graveyard. He walked a half-mile through a bean field. A man in Dickinson, North Dakota, explained to him why we have fewer windmills than we used to. He listened to the KISS solo albums and the Rod Stewart box set.

At one point, poisonous snakes became involved. The road is hard. From the Chelsea Hotel to the swampland where Lynyrd Skynyrd's plane went down to the site where Kurt Cobain blew his head off, Chuck explored every brand of rock star demise. He wanted to know why the greatest career move any musician can make is to stop breathing...and what this means for the rest of us.

I enjoyed this book, but it wasn't what I expected from the editor's description. This is a memoir. It's not just about rock n' roll and death, it's about the love life of Chuck Klosterman (and I'm not quite sure why he doesn't narrate this book).

I enjoy Chuck's personality. His references to the music he listens to and relates to are sometimes obscure, but always fantastic.

However, listeners/readers ought to know that rock n' roll is the relatively quiet backseat friend in this story. It's really you and Chuck riding up front.

No offense to the narrator, but once you've listened to Chuck Klosterman read Chuck Klosterman, nothing else really compares. I've read this book before and just wanted to go over it again but had to stop it. It felt a little like my dad narrating the book... the sarcasm wasn't in the right places. Check out IV or Sex, Drugs & Cocoa Puffs instead if you haven't already.

if you're a true rock or music fan and think it's actually about anything to do with music you will be very disappointed. Sounds like it was written by a whiny hipster. he is about 30 in this book but acts like he is a spoiled 12 year old. complete waste of time!!!!!!!

I was looking forward to a lively road trip built around death, drugs and rock & roll. Instead, what we get is a long treatise of Chuckie's relationships, which are, sadly, even less interesting than my own. At the very end of the book\, his editor tells him its a bad idea. Lucy is right.

What do you think your next listen will be?

Back to Stephen King.

If you could play editor, what scene or scenes would you have cut from Killing Yourself to Live?

The Deep and Heavy Philosophizin'! He may ave written The Ethicist column for the NY Times Sunday Mag. But his deepness is pretty shallow.

Any additional comments?

Was going to listen to a few more of his books. Think I'll pass on that notion...

As another review by Lori made clear, the book's description is misleading. The author drones on about his personal life which isn't interesting enough to merit this kind of attention. Sparse actual references to music. I felt myself getting stupider the longer I listened and, admittedly, stopped after two hours.